New England SC2 League S2T1 Report

I played round one against Trooneh. We vetoed maps down to Xel’Naga Caverns, a map I particularly like for PvP because I can very easily double gate proxy in my opponent’s base, and since most players don’t check the specific location I use for proxies, I basically win automatically, since by the time their scout after gateway gets to my base, I already have a zealot in their mineral line killing probes. Unfortunately, Trooneh scouted my proxy instantly and I summarily lost because he responded appropriately.

Game two I chose Metalopolis mostly because it’s a map I’m comfortable with. The only drawback for Trooneh in this situation is that he scouted my proxy instantly which tells me he either does the same thing himself or that he got really lucky. I don’t think he got really lucky. I think he knows how to cheese and how to defend against cheese. With him being ahead in the series 1-0, and knowing that game two of a best of three series is the best time to cheese for a quick win, I decided to be as safe as possible. I scouted his proxy without any problems at all, and counter cheesed with cannons to seal a win.

I honestly don't remember what happened game three. Neither of us cheesed, but I unfortunately get pretty drained mentally when playing, especially when the series goes to the last game coming off of two unorthodox games.

Round two I had to play Tyler. No, not that Tyler. I admit I was already slightly worried to play him as I’d heard he has an unorthodox ZvP style. To me, “unorthodox” is loosely translated in my mind to “I’m going to lose miserably.”

Tyler and I vetoed maps until we ended up with Xel’Naga Caverns, just like my first series. I played off of what I know and I did my standard 3gate expansion build into hallucination for scouting. I sent my first phoenix out expecting to see him droning up on two bases and going for roaches and maybe a lair, but instead what I saw was a baneling nest. Unfortunately, I didn’t see his third he had already taken until much later.

Admittedly, I was not expecting a baneling nest nor did I have a proper idea of how to follow up. I effectively fell apart after that, just making random units without thought or purpose, and I ended up with a lot of stalkers, sentries, and immortals. Had Tyler gone roaches I’d have been fine.

I summarily moved out, killed his third while I sent a small amount of zealots at the mineral line at his second, which delayed his army just enough to let me get the hatchery kill. Then I don’t know what I did, but my army got surrounded easily and my panicked force fields didn’t change the outcome of the fight at all. I now had no army, no third, and I knew he had a lot of zerglings and banelings on the map. My attempts to take a third were laughable at best, and he flooded both my third and my natural with more zerglings and banelings than you want to see as a protoss player.

Game two I chose Shakuras Plateau, not so much because I like the map, but more because I hear zerg players bitch about that map all the time, and Tyler plays zerg, so I figured that was a good idea. I spawned on the bottom left and attempted to expand early to my natural, but when I saw Tyler’s early expansion at the top right, I decided to be an ass. I put two cannons behind his natural’s gas geysers and timed them perfectly so that they finished with his hatchery. His hatchery finishes to find two cannons beating on it.

From experience, I know zergs will simply try to expand elsewhere, so I scouted for that. Sure enough, he has expected to the bottom right main, and as you might expect, I cannoned it. Only this time I didn’t pay much attention to the timing of his hatchery and my cannons finished before his hatchery so he could cancel it. Unfortunately, he’d taken the bottom right third expansion visible to the southern tower and I just never scouted it.

I got my own expansion up after a cute block from Tyler when he made a hatchery where my nexus should’ve been, and I quickly went stargate expecting to find his third with a void ray. Instead, my void ray found a nydus canal and I suddenly realized that I hadn’t been spreading pylons around my base the way I normally would. Especially against zerg players, having pylons spread out around your base is great for spotting nydus worms as they pop up in your base. I was low on both gateway count and gateway units, so I had mostly sentries and probes.

I brought my void ray back to my main once I heard the worm come up, and pulled almost all of my probes to help defend. Tyler once again had gone for banelings, and as you’d expect against probes, banelings wreck them. I think I lost a total of 54 probes (or something close to that) in a matter of seconds. Somehow, I held off both his first and his second waves, and was able to kill the nydus worm. I spent the next few minutes doing nothing but making probes and dedicating all chrono boosts to this. I knew that my economy had taken a major hit, but that if I could get that back up and running I was still in this.

I’ve found that when a zerg goes nydus to counter your fast expansion, he basically needs to win outright or destroy a base. He didn’t kill a base, but merely crippled my economy. And by “merely,” I mean I had 11 probes left. I made probes like a madman until I could support my production facilities again, and then moved out knowing that by now Tyler must’ve had a third or a fourth, or maybe even a fifth. I found a nydus in the top left main and a hatchery building in the top left natural, which I easily killed. From there, I scouted his second (the one I didn’t know about from earlier), killed that, and won the game. Somehow.

Game three Tyler picked Bel’Shir Beach. Shocking. A zerg picking Bel’Shir Beach? Unheard of. I pretty much assumed right away he would go banelings again, especially on a map like BSB. Furthermore, I assumed he would try to drop my mineral lines a lot, as there’s a lot of blocked lines of sight to seeing incoming drops around your bases because of the trees and such.

After a miserable wall in at my choke, I went with my standard 3gate expansion and went into void rays after deciding that since banelings can’t hit void rays, void rays might help. I watched for when Tyler would attempt to take his third (key word: attempt). I cannoned it.

Having two forward pylons, I decided to push his natural, but was eventually forced to retreat. I took my own third, walling in against the water with gateways and cannons, and cannoning my other expansions. Tyler had been using baneling drops as expected, some of which were successful, some not, and I decided that I didn’t want to commit too much of my army to defending expansions against drops, and that I’d rather have enough cannons to deter drops outright, or at least ensure that all his overlords would be lost in the process. This is exactly what happened, as the next couple of drops were rather ineffective due to losing every overlord, some with banelings still inside.

After a while, Tyler pushed my third, but a line of zerglings kept his banelings from busting through my gateway wall, and force fields from sentries warped in delayed his attack long enough for my army to get there. Once the force fields dropped, however, his banelings got through and took out every gateway, but then he lost his entire army to mine. I easily killed his fourth and kept pushing from there for the win.

Needless to say, I was rather exhausted at the end of this series. To make matters worse, I had to play Complexity’s Ryan round three, who is not only my friend, but a beastly protoss.

After a lengthy break to let the loser’s bracket catch up, Ryan and I played. Game one we ended up on Tal’Darim Altar, and as you’d expect out of a PvP, we both went 4gate (the 20 probe, 1 gas variant). Our play was identical until I made one massive error: I built my third pylon before I built my three additional gateways. I decided to defend, and with both of us warping in our first round, we engaged. In the middle of the battle, I went back to chrono boost my warp gates, and when I came back to the fight, I made my second massive error: I killed one of my own stalkers. I didn’t even realize until after the game was over and someone told me, but I lost game one pretty badly.

Game two I chose Metalopolis and spawned on the right position, with Ryan spawning at the top. Ryan proxied in between my base and the bottom base just outside the southeast gold base on the low ground. What’s funny is I almost forgot we were playing on MLG maps and I almost scouted the close ground position first, which would have caught his proxy almost immediately, but I caught myself and instead scouted the part of the gold base where you can fit proxy gates without the Xel’Naga tower seeing, and then continued on to scout his base.

The moment I saw an empty main with very few probes, I immediately made a forge and stated to prepare for the inevitable zealot. His first zealot came in to my base and I got a surround on it with some of my probes. I was able to kill it and get a cannon started while I kept my own zealot production going. I used probes on stop position a couple of times to keep his zealots from getting to my cannon until it could finish, but lost some probes in the process.

At this point, I knew his economy was at best only equal with mine since he cut probes to make quicker gates, but he had also killed some of my probes, too. I also knew that I should probably have just gone straight into some kind of a 4gate to try to seal the game, but I figured Ryan would know this and would probably prepare for this. In playing mind games with myself, I actually found myself not knowing what to do, and decided to go for a robo to get an observer out to see what he was doing.

I saw Ryan going for 3gate robo and collossi, and I began to do the same, although more slowly. I knew that once he had a couple of collossi out and range finished, he would likely try to attack me. I decided to be aggressive before then to either scare him out of attacking, or to try to hit him before he was comfortable. I was able to pick off a pylon at the edge of his base, but his ramp was too well defended for me to be able to do much else.

As expected, he pushed out and I did the same to meet him at the tower. Range finished for me just in time, and down one collossi we fought, but I focused more on trying to kill his collossi. I knew if I could just knock him down one collossi we were back on even colossi count, and I had my natural coming online much sooner than his. Unfortunately, I completely screw that up, getting both of his collossi into the yellow, and then losing my own collossi by running it over units that weren’t mine. Oops.

Knocked into the loser’s bracker, I had to play Blacklist next. To be honest, I don’t remember the games that well. I was absolutely exhausted mentally, especially after having to play someone I know and who I know was favored to win the entire tournament. Blacklist easily beat me 2-0 and I was knocked out of the tournament, finishing in a four way tie for ninth place.

Ryan spawned on the bottom left of Shakuras Plateau and ducky spawned on the top right. Ryan opened nexus first with ducky going pool first. Ducky used some impressive drone micro to delay the forge, and Ryan responded in kind using his scouting probe to delay ducky’s hatchery in his natural.

Ducky took a quick third knowing Ryan can’t be aggressive. Ryan made a half dozen phoenix and then moved out to scout and was able to kill a queen uncontested while transitioning into 6gate blink. He then went double robo as he tried to take his third, but ducky pushed with hydras and roaches, killed Ryan’s third, and was able to do a lot of damage to Ryan’s natural, taking out both a robo and a cyber core. A second push into Ryan’s natural sealed the game, giving Ryan his first loss of the tournament.

Ryan chose Shattered Temple for game two and spawned on the right side with ducky spawning on the left. Ducky opened pool first, but had his hatchery blocked by Ryan’s scouting probe. Ryan expanded after one gate and quickly went stargate for a void rays.

Ryan took his third before ducky took his, and followed up his void rays with phoenixes and collossi. Ducky defended against the void rays with queens and spores and went for banelings while taking the gold.

A phoenix on patrol caught an overlord full of banelings going in to drop Ryan’s main mineral line just before Ryan started a mothership while ducky started hive. A second attempt at a baneling drop at Ryan’s third was unsuccessful.

A push out with the mothership culminated in ducky’s entire army being vortexed, and ducky immediately typed out with “fml gg.”

Ducky chose Tal’Darim Altar for game three and spawned on the top left with Ryan spawning on the bottom right. Ryan opened nexus first and ducky opened pool before hatch. Ryan started more gates and a robo while ducky went for roaches and took his third. Ryan saw ducky’s baneling nest and spire as he took his third.

Ducky began to take his fifth while taking out Ryan’s third, using overlords full of banelings to destroy Ryan’s army except for a couple of stalkers and a couple of collossi. Ducky transitioned into heavy muta production, which is a great decision as Ryan lacked the appropriate anti air. Ryan lost his entire army while reduced to two mining bases.

With Ryan down to one mining base and ducky taking his sixth, it looked bad for Ryan. However, their ducky’s army of zerglings, banelings, and mutas smashed into Ryan’s deathball of void rays, collossi, stalkers and archons, and ducky lost the majority of his army. Ryan pushed ducky’s natural, losing a collossi to a spore and then proceeded to demolish ducky’s main, including all of his tech buildings.

Ducky rebuilt his spire almost immediately, and Ryan attempted to take a fourth only to find ducky had already expanded there. With that expansion dead, ducky was reduced to two mining bases with Ryan resorting to long distance mining.

Muta harass killed a lot of Ryan’s probes while Ryan killed what was ducky’s fourth, reducing ducky yet again to just one mining base. With Ryan doubling ducky’s supply, the protoss deathball sat outside ducky’s last base while he attempted to harass the deathball with muta to no avail.

It was now that Ryan realized he never got collossus range, and while ducky was responding, Ryan blinked his muta directly underneath ducky’s mutas, killing many of them. Ryan attacked into ducky’s base and ducky typed out, concluding the winner’s bracket finals with Ryan winning 2-1.

The chat at the end of the game was appropriate:

Game one of the grand finals was on Shakuras Plateau, with Ryan spawning on the bottom left (again) and ducky spawning on the top right (again). Ryan opened nexus first and ducky opened with his usual pool before hatch.

Ryan did something nobody expected him to do: He want fast templar archives while getting charge even before additional gateways. As his archives finished, Ryan made eight gateways for a total of nine. The moment Ryan’s +2 weapons upgrade finished, Ryan killed his forge and immediately moved out and attacked while taking a third. Ducky was forced to type out.

Ducky chose Metalopolis for game two and spawned on the top position with Ryan spawning on the bottom position. Ryan opened with a 1gate expansion with ducky doing his usual pool before hatch. Ryan followed up with void rays and phoenixes into robo. Ducky used four queens to defend his third from the void rays and Ryan took his third while teching to collossi.

Ducky attacked just as Ryan’s collossi range and +1 attack finished, and using amazing force fields easily held the attack.

With both players taking their fourths, Ryan began to get blink and a mothership. Their armies smashed into each other, and Ryan lost a lot of collosi and his mothership to ducky’s corruptors. Ducky then forced Ryan to protect his main by dropping behind the smoke while hitting Ryan’s fourth simultaneously.

With a second mothership out and ducky transitioning into muta and banelings while taking his gold, a zergling runby got into Ryan’s natural killing probes as well as his robotics bay. A cuple of baneling drops at Ryan’s fourth and fifth killed a decent amount of probes.

Ryan pushed ducky’s fourth but was met with a lot of banelings, and lost the majority of his army, including his mothership, despite a vortex that caught the majority of ducky’s army. With ducky out of resources, he typed out.

Ducky chose Tal’Darim Altar for game three and spawned on the top left with Ryan spawning on the bottom left. Ducky went for a quick pool and Ryan went forge first, but upon scouting the fast pool, walled off his choke with gateways and built a cannon which finished as the forge was getting into the yellow from ducky’s zerglings. Ducky typed out, and that concluded the first qualifier tournament of the second season of the New England StarCraft 2 league.

First place: coLRyan
Second place: duckyRanger
Third place: DamnCats

The top three! From left to right: duckyRanger, coLRyan, DamnCats